“I dont need to conform to your ideas of beauty”

“That smile could move mountains. It could also break hearts.”

“The opening notes of a song began, some plucking of guitar strings. I knew the melody. It was Maroon 5s She Will Be Loved. As pop songs went, it was pretty damn good, a bit of a favorite of mine.”

“Two-thirty in the morning was kind of a bitch as times went. It fell into the in-between, nowhere land. Too late to get a really good night's sleep, but much too early to start the day.”

“I don’t need to conform to your ideas of beauty”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“For those who have learned what suffering is early on, you have prepared ahead of the pack so that you can take care of the pack.”

“It remains for you to save one before saving others, to lead one before leading others.”

“I wasn't planning to lead, I was standing in the back and then everyone turned around.”

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

“One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / th...”

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”